Stargazing
by Choosing Sarah
Summary: The city's back in Pegasus, and John and Rodney have been watching the stars together for months when Rodney floors John with a simple observation. McShep, slash.


**Title:** Stargazing

**Fandom:** Stargate Atlantis

**Author:** Choosing Sarah

**Spoilers:** Series Finale

**Timeframe:** A year after the Finale

**Rating:** PG-13

**Summary:** The city's back in Pegasus, and John and Rodney have been watching the stars together for months when Rodney makes an observation. McShep.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Created for entertainment purposes only. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.

**Word Count:** 1105

**Story Status:** Complete

There's something about watching the stars with Rodney that John can't get enough of. It isn't that stargazing with Rodney is magical—just the opposite. Rodney takes every opportunity to inform John the exact specifications of every star, planet, moon and nebula visible to their naked eyes or that of the Ancient telescope they'd found on sublevel B eight months ago. No, studying the stars with Rodney is one of the most real things John has ever had in his life.

"Okay." Rodney backs away from the telescope after setting it on the specific phenomenon he wants John to see. John obediently moves up to the device once Rodney has made a space for him. "Now I've got the filters on this, which themselves are pretty amazing considering we can barely filter out the light surrounding our sun by contrast, and you're going to be looking at a black hole."

"A black hole, huh?" John smiles and looks back to his best friend. It's Rodney's favorite thing to show him because then the scientist can spend hours talking about how wrong Stephen Hawking is.

"But not just any black hole." Rodney raises a finger as if in lecture. "It's a double black hole!" he finishes with glee.

"A double black hole?" John's eyes go back to the Ancient telescope, wanting to see what Rodney means. Sure enough, John sees two tiny pinpricks of darkness surrounded by various swirling colors of light that turn redder as they get closer to those miniscule bits of blackness. John knows the coloring and even being able to see the black hole at all is a trick of the Ancient filters, but he still expects the visual in his mind as what a black hole should look like.

"If you'll notice, the event horizons are just a few quadrillion miles apart. Soon the one of the left will swallow the one on the right and they'll create a much more massive black hole—still nothing that could compete with Galactic Nuclei, but quite impressive by itself nonetheless."

"How soon?" John wants to know.

"I'm glad you asked!" Rodney exclaims, and John just has to turn around and see his face. Rodney is smiling widely, his cheeks flushed and practically glowing, while his bright blue eyes are wide and twinkling. "Because if we go to P92-716, we can watch it happening right now!"

John grins back at him. "Cool!" His eyes skitter down to Rodney's perfectly crooked lips without meaning to and then he hurriedly shifts back around and looks through the telescope again. Not that Rodney will notice. He never notices. John clears his throat. "So where is P92-716 anyway?" he asks.

"I'll show you," Rodney says, but when John straightens to move away, he feels Rodney close up behind him, entering the Stargate coordinates into the telescope's computer with his right hand, the other settling at John's waist. His head peers over John's shoulder, his mouth just beside John's ear, and it's like they're inside their own little bubble universe.

"You know," Rodney begins softly, as if he feels the intimate mood between them, too. "At first I didn't even believe you found my astronomy lessons at all appealing. It was so soon after Jennifer left to return to earth, and I thought you were just humoring me because you were worried about me." Involuntarily, John tilts his neck to bring his ear a little closer to Rodney's whispering. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciated it, but I didn't think you really cared one way or the other about pulsars or neutron stars." John can almost feel Rodney's self-deprecating grin on his earlobe he's so close. "I guess it took me almost the entirety of these ten months to realize you really are interested," Rodney concludes, and then closes the short distance between them and rests his lips on John's neck for a bare piece of a second. It takes John's breath away. "You are, aren't you?" Rodney's lips graze John's neck when he speaks.

John lifts his hand to squeeze Rodney's where it rests atop the telescope while he tries to get his mouth to work. "Yes," he finally manages to hiss, tilting his head on purpose this time to expose more of his neck.

"Really?" and only Rodney could be surprised at this when John's been panting after him for the better part of six years.

"God, yes, Rodney! Can we…" And John trails off because he's not sure what's okay to ask for.

"We can do a lot of things," Rodney whispers back and runs a trail of kisses from just under John's earlobe to the base of his neck. "We can even do them out here now if you want since you've finally got a president who isn't a complete moron."

John turns around inside the loop of Rodney's arms. Both his hands make their way up Rodney's thick chest, just barely teasing his nipples along the way before traveling up his neck. The digits of his right hand tease into Rodney's hair, while John's left palm cups his jaw. John feels along Rodney's lips with his thumb for half a second before leaning in slowly—savoring the way he's falling into Rodney—and pressing their mouths together. Rodney opens up to him at once. His tongue slides against John's, and it feels so damn good the only thing John can think is Rodney's name, over and over again. When their lips part, he speaks it aloud.

"John," Rodney returns, the tone as filled with awe as that one time on M67-384 when they were trapped in the Ancient prison and John had to figure out all the math for rerouting the power supply in his head while Rodney manually tested and switched out the crystals.

"Let's go inside for a while," John says, voice raspy as if from misuse.

"Yeah," Rodney agrees readily. "Good idea." But then he kisses John again and runs his hands from John's thighs to his shoulder blades and back again.

After several minutes, they lie down together side by side on the makeshift bed that John and Rodney sometimes recline on when they eschew the Ancient telescope in order to keep their hands free for Molsons and Bud Light as they stargaze. Their lips never stay apart for more than a few seconds at a time as they learn each other with hands and mouths and tongues. They fall asleep out there in their clothes, kept warm by one another in the brisk early autumn air. They're still out there when their own star rises to herald a new day.

END


End file.
